Get Some Shut-Eye, Yo!

Even this foxy lady collapsed when she heard the Bronies were real.

Just imagine how much you could get done if you were one of those kickass yogis who could survive on 3 hours of sleep per night. You could write a whole damn magnum opus on the post-modernist cultural symbolism contained in Princess Zelda (yes, you know you want to), film a documentary on Bronies (wait, that’s already been done), watch so many episodes of TED-Ed that you’ll be able to debunk the “10 percent of our brain” myth (and understand the science behind it all), or kill that sales and marketing pitch for your biggest client in a fraction of the time. In short, you could ninja the shit out of life.

Notwithstanding the seemingly endless pros attached to sacrificing sleep for the greater good, studies listed in the Harvard Business Review have shown that staying awake for longer than 18 consecutive hours significantly impairs your:

reaction speed

short and long-term memory

ability to focus

decision making capacity

math processing

cognitive speed

spatial orientation

When you try to survive on 5 to 6 hours’ sleep per night, for only a few days in a row, the accumulated sleep deficit magnifies these negative effects and can also cause physical impairments, such as high blood pressure and obesity. If you average 4 hours of sleep a night for 5 days, you will develop the same level of cognitive impairment as if you had been awake for 24 hours; equivalent to being legally drunk.

In short, chronic sleep deprivation can cause parts of your brain to shut down and make you do the kind of dumbass shit that you do when you’re drunk, only people don’t know you’re “drunk”… and so the extenuating circumstances for your acting like a dumbass are significantly reduced and significantly less endearing.

So do everyone and yourself a favour and get some damn shut-eye by following our 9 common-sense tips for improving both the quality and quantity of your sleep…they’ll have you functioning at “level-bitchin’” in no time.